Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Exercise 23: Thanks for the memories!

Because I am a visual person images are such a joy. Of all the exercises I really liked the
flickr mash ups and the online generators best. Because I am a pragmatic person I also liked Bloglines to help me find and organize the RSS feeds and the 2007 Web 2.0 Awards List for introducing me to so many valuable new sites. Bloglines and the Awards List makes me more efficient and effective. Since I am a believer in life long learning, the entire adventure in Navigating New Technologies helped to broaden my geek horizons.

2. Until the “23 things” program my education and furthering of my professional development was “catch as catch can,” or simply haphazard: for instance, I would take part in whatever irresistible class was offered that would fit my work schedule, whatever topic was offered at the OCLC symposium at either ALA mid-winter or annual conferences, whatever workshops were offered by the Center for University Teaching Center, the Technology and all that Jazz Workshop (before it passed on was an "ahead of the curve" introduction to cutting edge technologies), whatever workshops PLAN offered, or continuing education courses that fit my schedule, or a personal campaign to learn new software (often presentation power point or Articulate type software).

3. There were several things that were takeaways for me. The list of categorized winning web sites was wonderful. The concept of the mash up was great as well. I had to have faith that the application did exist. The most concrete takeaway will be the blog that I wanted to start a year ago.

4. We were all working in separate vacuums. Frequently students learn best from peers. Peers who keep them from going down the wrong path, peers who share with each other to seek out perceived quality resources, peers who motivate each other by simple but insistent inquiries into progress toward completion. Students could not be responsible to read all blogs but could be put into groups or teams. I feel that the completion rate would be higher if there had been some required interaction.

5. I will be at the beginning of the line for any future discovery program that you may offer. I found the program to be more of a time demand than I initially assessed. I could have never done the program during work time and also accomplished my assignments. The discover exercise required a very fair amount of volunteered hours.

Exercise 22: netLibrary and Project Gutenberg

Net library has been a favorite of mine for a number of years. However, I’ve found that our library users are not as immediate in their acceptance of this product. I’ve demonstrated that they do not have to read the entire book online. They can easily zero in on the specific chapter or chapters that will meet their needs. Somehow if the book is of interest to them the conversation comes around to, “Do you have a print copy of this book?” Each time it happens I am surprised, but it happens at least 80% of the time. The Net Library interface I find to be useable but not entirely intuitive. I particularly like the search feature that gets the user to the chapters that will meet his/her needs and the dictionary feature. What a luxury to have it resident so that the student does not have to open another browser window.

Project Gutenberg began even before I started library school. Its infancy was in 1971. Where else can you search for a favorite Shakespearean quote with such ease? This site is a dream come true. What a wealth of out of copyright classics. How much easier it is for serious literacy textual scholars.

Exercise 21: Podcasts and podcasting

Podcast.net is a tool that offers 18 broad categories and a modest interface. There is no way to request a particular time period or to request a podcast that occurs after a particular date. I did find some public domain podcasts by Jermaine Grigg’s on the topic “Secrets to playing piano by ear.” There are 21 lessons.

Podcast Alley offered the same series of podcasts by Mr. Grigg. The tool Podcast Alley was put together in an expeditious manner. The podcast titles come up in a numbered list. Is it consecutively numbered or is it some kind of undefined ranking? Is my vote going to affect the numbered list? After clicking on vote I did find out that “Rankings on this site is determined by the number of votes.” I found some ESOL podcast some for pay and some free. There were many, many grammatical or careless editing errors on this site.

Yahoo podcast beta is certainly aquamarine. “Sign in, sign up, help” this was a very welcoming invitation. “Find ’em” and “listen to ‘em” were the two categories we were offered. One begins to question which population demographic is Yahoo trying to target.

Podcasts or vodcasts or screencasts would be an ideal way to inform our user public. Buy me the hardware. I’m ready to rock and roll.

Exercise 20: YouTube

YouTube is an endless source of amusement. The first YouTube video I went to the site to find was Nora. The talented Nora and her encore performance are linked in my first blog post. I had seen the video on either CNN or MSNBC and decided I had to find it and send it as an email link to MS Mildred Bou, my piano teacher. She was amused and mentioned she had tried to instruct Tango, the family cat, to play piano but Tango would have nothing to do with piano lessons.

More recently the YouTube Democratic Debate gave us an interactive, collaborative, national perspective of the concerns of the American people. The questions were guileless and direct. The people chosen to have their questions asked of the presidential candidates were non-intellectuals, non elite, non Lexus drivers, non Harvard professors. Instead, the questions were from working people. They asked questions discussed around the dinner table or at a local “watering hole.” I feel that the candidates made a somewhat more sincere effort at answering the questions as asked, rather than as they might with the journalists’ questions: simply take them as a launching point for their political stump speeches.

All in all it was an imaginative use of new technology. Maybe the University’s president will request that student submit YouTube videos for the Q & A part of his welcome back gathering.


I'm looking for some models for "Library advertisements" and think there is a lot to learn from this one.


Another link. Library advertisement. Maybe too cute.


This one is just right. We will model our library's advertisement on this example. The music is good, the pace is good, we just need to make it for an academic library. "Come in and Check it out!"

Exercise 19: Web 2.0 Awards

I chose to look at igoogle [www.igoggle.com]. This looked like a pretty tame homepage. It had in the left channel Google News, center a local weather (definable by zipcode), and the right channel which tells us the date and time (interestingly an analog clock is on the page.) At the bottom of the page (maybe there should have been a pg 13 warning) was the hot tip of the day. The igooglers are well socialized or soon will be. The topic of the day on Friday July 20th was “How to Hint for a Kiss from a Guy.” This potentially useful site was located at Wikihow, “The how to manual that you can edit.” We also had 2 plus pages on “How to Air Kiss.” There were additional instructions for other “Kisses.” Probably this is a very desirable text-based educational experience for 12 to 14 year olds.

Exercise 18: Zoho Writer

Zoho writer a new word processor that is public domain. It has approxiamtely (sp) 18 fonts to choose from and a reasonalbe (sp) number of sizes. It has not corrected my misspellings but when I requested spell checker it did underline my boo-boos. I tried the export feature and exported my document to Word where I could then get the correct spellings for the errors.

This could make sharing a document easier for our students. The students could be using a shared interface instead of multiple word processors and thereby run into fewer problems. Sometimes our students come to us complaining that they do not have Word 2007 and since work processors are not forward compatible and the student does not know about the conversion application package that is available and fret a great deal. The diacritics work resumé. It was a interesting choice to use the omega as the special character symbol. I could not find a sharp or flat sign but when I went to Word I could not find it either.

How will I create my programme for my first recital? Maybe I'll just have to spell it out. cool

Exercise 17: Plan Sandbox Wiki

Wow, the PLAN Sandbox Wiki somehow brought it all home to me. The wiki is clean, multi-channeled and very easy for interested to parties to join. I’m certain it was not as easy as it seems to create – somehow it never is.

But I can truly see this as a means to communicate with our library clientele. It’s a little scary. It seems from surveys I’ve seen that you get either end of the spectrum. Surveys seem to attract those who love you or those who don’t. A wiki would be a great way for student, faculty, or community members to give their perspective on many aspects of library service. It could also serve as a place for students to list collection deficits or to recommend an upcoming hot topics that need to be covered. In all a wiki could provide an avenue for interested library users to help reshape the library to better suit their wants and needs.

Exercise 16: Wikis

I enjoyed the wikis. I spent too much time at Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.
I spent most of my time in Reference Services and Information Literacy, Online Tutorials. There was some very useful information, but there was also a very fair amount of links that dead-ended at commercial sites that wanted to sell me expensive software that I know my library is not going to go for.

http://econtent.typepad.com/econtent/2006/11/have_a_knowledg.html

This link held some remarkable information. I will need to get back to this site.

http://instructionwiki.org/Sharing_resources The library instruction wiki was also excellent. Get back to this one, too.

Exercise 15: Library 2.0 post Yes, I watch Keith Oberman!

Library 2.0 is about collaborations and conversations coming from libraries to library users, from library users to libraries, and among library users. They are invited to participate interactively with the libraries via blogs, wikis, and social book marking tools. In the 80’s libraries made a major push to develop online public access catalogs. Since then libraries have done well in building electronic collections. Conversely, librarians did not insist that providers comply with the users’ needs for easy to use and robust database interfaces. With the exception of FirstSearch, we have few intuitive interfaces for access to the wealth of our electronic databases. We have dozens of database providers who have simply run amuck, hence the need for yet another product – the federated search tools.

How do libraries regain the interest and trust of the potential library users? Certainly we must use all means available – blogs, wikis, and a Web presence that are responsive to the user wants and needs such as instruction or infotainment via pod, vod, and screen casting; presence in the Second Life; and any other means that becomes available tomorrow to meet, find, and regain library users interest and participation.

Libraries and librarians need to embrace the future instead of running a treadmill of indecision and inaction. Google's mission is to provide access to all of the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. We need to embrace Google, especially the pertinent off-spring of Google such as Google Scholar, Google Print, and Google Books. They have the same mission: “Information for the people”. We also need to work with OCLC initiatives since their mantra is “harnessing collective intelligence”. We need to pay OCLC for services rendered and keep our libraries holdings up to date. We can now avail ourselves of the “Library local” feature that can be linked through a Google search and provide further access to our library users. We need to ride the coattails of the winners. Take ownership of the decisions to cooperate and thereby give more to our library users. We need, at a minimum, to keep up with the trends and we had better anticipate useful technological innovations. We must decide to cooperate with Google and not dangle our metaphorical toes above the water for a year or a year and a half before taking the plunge. If we are to survive we must embrace the future instead of running a treadmill of indecision and inaction.

Exercise 14: Technorati

Technorati is not exactly the most useable and easy to navigate product. It does have some virtue if you are truly determined.

As usual I was searching for the “adult beginner piano” player or student. The first search netted me quite a few in Japanese. I studied Japanese for only two semesters so this was not going to work. I was already in the advanced search and it was only after my search result had been returned that I could filter for English. (Since the developers of this product know that it is used worldwide there should have been an option to choose more than one language. Most Europeans read multiple languages and many Asians read at least a smattering of English.)

Ultimately I found a good piano site. I’m certain another product (I’m not sure which would have let me arrive with less annoyance.)

In the Google (beta blog search), with the search phrase "adult beginner piano student" I was rewarded with 2,454 sites. However Google blog search did not recognize the words as a phrase and no site listed on the first couple of pages were relevant. When I went in for the "adult beginner piano” search the only relevant blog listed was mine. The Google spiders had already picked me up.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Exercise 13: Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us would be a great tool for people to use at a public service desk. It seems that the student could wile away their “spare work time” in helping to build the reference resource. It could have well-organized, annotated links to frequently recommended sites. Even brand-new student assistants could perform like pros.

Del.icio.us could serve an even more challenging role of keeping me in some kind of good order. As a former cataloger I can relate to cloud tags. I especially like the idea of personally assigned (off the wall associated) tags. If tools such as these had existed decades ago how much further ahead could I have been in this game of life.

I’m not so certain about the social aspect of Del.icio.us. There were no good links for “adult beginner piano.” Maybe I’m the one who needs to create the list.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Exercise 12: Rollyo, a somewhat good thing.

I've mellowed on this site since I wrote my title last week. It was just those ads that are so seemingly innocently place in the middle of the list of entries. Granted they are the lovely mint green that should give the attentive reader a clue that something new is being introduced and not a continuation of the list. It is the insidious and persistent pursuit of that "dollar" that makes me skeptical.

The Rollyo idea is sound and I will probably return to it with a more self serving list of adult beginner piano players sites. Certainly someone else is encountering the same victories and hurdles. I would like to have somebody else’s take on this issue. Rollyo will help me to keep tabs on this very tiny niche market of adult beginner piano players.

All in all there is a huge untapped world that has been opened to me with our 23 things and I’m not even half way through.

Powered by Rollyo

Exercise 11: Library Thing, a good thing.

LibraryThing is well-organized multipurpose tool that appeals both to librarians and a general audience of readers. As I was using LibraryThing I left my “librarian thought” and instead went into the mode of “book group member.” I tried to see the product through the eyes of Mary Ann, an Internet savvy member of my book group. The function of association “people who read x also liked y and z” would appeal to Mary Ann because she tries to come to the meetings prepared with a recommendation for the next month’s book selection. Granted we could find a similar function at Amazon but somehow when no one is going to profit from the item cross referenced items, I feel more positive about the item suggested. In the fall when my group starts again I will introduce the LibraryThing Web site to my sister readers. I predict that the group members will like the fact that we can have the group’s history of books read, a list of books by a particular author at a mouse click, reviews of readers, and ultimately more informed choices for future book nominations.

Exercise 10: Generators

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Here is the nouveau etch-a-sketch called Sketch Generator called Dumpr at

The generatorsare fun. They can spread alot of joy for the striking of a few key strokes. These apps a getting to be very easy to navigate. Earlier in our exploration it was a chore to get through the text on the site, that is, to zero in on the operative next step. Now I'm just zipping along.

However I am somewhat baffled by the fact that the gnibear's sketch is not instantly visible but needs an additional click.

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I found the Cappuccino at ImageChef.

ImageChef.com - Custom comment codes for MySpace, Hi5, Friendster and more

Exercise 9: Newsfeeds

Topix, Liszen, Syndic8. Technorati will be covered in a future post.

LISZEN some day will be a useful site for librarians. Currently it boasts to cover 700 library blogs. It needs some help to increase its coverage before it is seen as a first stop search spot.

Of the three newsfeeds visited for this exercise I especially liked Topix. The indexing seemed to give useful results, instead of a “come on” to more advertisements for commercial enterprises. The paid ads were discreetly off to the side and clearly labeled. Furthermore, Topix seemed to view “phrase” (quotation marks enclosing your search terms) as a phrase search and therefore, I did not get miscellaneous irrelevant hits. I liked the “interactive graph of "x topic" in the news.” A very nice feature if one is trying to zero in on a particular time period.

Syndic8 is an extremely well conceived site. The intake information for the sites is very complete (it almost rivals the MARC format). The chart and statistical breakdown on the site are interesting to view and will no doubt serve as a motivating feature for the hardworking Syndic8 staff. I’m very favorably impressed.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Exercise 8: Blogroll

After considerable shenanigans and no help from the blogline’s helpful hint, Library’s Cat and I managed to put my blogroll on my blog. I’m certain there was just some tiny something I was doing wrong the first six tries.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Exercise 7: Technology issue: Rant du jour

Technology issue: Rant du jour

Our University’s library is exploring the possibility of going with an OPAC other than the one offered by our Library Management System provider ExLibris. I can only say goodbye to Aleph and unresponsive providers.

We are returning to the innovations of the days of yore. Many of us remember the search engine Northern Lights. The Endeca interface certainly reminds us of this grandparent guided navigational system.

The advantage of the Endeca interface is the intuitive nature of the interface. Certainly if it is the navigational system used by Home Depot it must be the choice for no nonsense searchers. The interface allows the initial searched for term or terms to fall into broad categories so that the person searching can narrow according to their preferred path.

The only question is why it has taken so long to give our library users an intuitive interface. We do not go home and struggle with our TiVo. We simple push menu and fall through the channels with no challenging terminology. We must realize that most of our users simply want to arrive at the desired end — a DVD, or a reference source, or, more likely an online full-text article – that is only modest in length.

Let’s make life easy for our students and faculty. Endeca is a baby step in the right direction.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Exercise 6: Flickr Mashup

In response to exercise 6, I've enjoyed exploring Flickr. I'm intrigued by the "mashup". I'm not fond of the nomenclature but it is expedient in conveying the merger of the applications.

We have used Flickr previously to assist in the marketing of a theater production. It is good that so many people are so generous in allowing others to use their images.

Recently I took a very abbreviated course in PhotoShop and Dreamweaver. The young man seated next to me was a NASCAR fan and he was creating trading cards for the local drivers to supplement his income. I’m now wondering if it was with a “mashup” such as I found on Flickr that he was creating the cards. My question now is how did he make the verso of the card? How does one print the card in alignment back to front on the card stock?

Exercise 5: Sharing photos in Flickr


Exercise 5, Sharing photos in Flickr. I liked this piano interior. I guess because my new world revolves around learning to play the piano. Day to day the lid stays closed on my piano, because I don’t want dust to mar the stunning interior.

Most musical instruments are as beautiful to behold as they are beautiful to hear. Recently I had guests for brunch and for the second time, since I’ve owned my piano, I opened the lid. The as yet unnamed piano possesses such voluptuous opulence it has got to be a female. I have been puzzling for months over what I should name my piano, I’m happy to entertain suggestions.

Friday, May 4, 2007

7 1/4 habits

I want to begin by responding to the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Life Long Learners. I begin with the end in mind! However, so much so, that I expect the project/plan to have been accomplished yesterday.

My greatest challenge would be in creating the learning toolbox. There is so little $$$ for software and hardware. I have been asking for presentation software for three to four years.
I certainly noticed that exercise two was beautifully created with Articulate. I guess I will have to be an unwelcome guest and borrow another division's software yet again.

Another interesting point was made in the "Lifelong Learners" presentation. Negative thinking and words are a pervasive part of life. I need to start a new manner of positive thought and block the negative words that are so much a part of daily existence.

Recently I began studying piano as an adult beginner. This step took a large amount of courage on my part because my older sister (who has recently left us) was an extremely accomplished pianist. This speaks to point two: Accept responsibility for your own learning. I'm playing with two hands but I'm not as accomplished as Nora. If this wasn't enough an encore command performance can be seen here. My first and favorite YouTube video.